Category Archives: Jacqueline Koyanagi

Ascension by Jacqueline Koyanagi was an alright read that just needed more time spent in the planning stages. This book started out great, there was an interesting plotline about a woman with a chronic illness that struggled to afford to pay for her and her aunt’s medication but she loved working on space ships and mechanical things so much, it was her calling in life. In order to have a better life for herself and her aunt, she stowaways on a ship looking for her sister, to attempt to talk the crew into becoming their engineer. The only reason they allow her to stay is because they are looking for her sister who is a spirit guide with a connection to the woman that might save the life of one of their crewmates. From this point, the story turns into a bit of a mess as the relationship focus wasn’t really my thing, and the world building/magic just didn’t make a whole lot of sense.

This book has lesbian characters along with a polyamorous relationship so if that is something you are interested in reading about, give it a try. I’m very pro-monogamy, so I couldn’t really connect much to the polyamory aspects of the story. Also, I didn’t think the characters were truthful enough with each other about their relationships for me to find the situation that they were in as something I could sympathize with. There was just a lot of lusting after the love interest and it didn’t seem like there was much of an emotional connection between the people in the relationship. If the characters were more honest with each other and it focused less on falling for someone that already had a partner, I could see myself liking this book a lot more.

The magic, world building, and some plot elements just didn’t really make a whole lot of sense at times. I didn’t think that most of the book was explained very well and I feel that the tight first person perspective didn’t help the reader understand. I liked some of the ideas in the story and I thought the characters had a lot of potential but were overshadowed by the problems. Overall I probably would give Koyanagi a second chance but probably not in this series.